Mark Dolliver's Takes: The Kid Must Be Right

While their parents find them uncommunicative, tweens and teens are the most communications-enabled beings on the planet. Kids are selective, though, about the sorts of technology they use for conveying and ingesting different sorts of information. In its monthly Trends & Tudes news-letter, Harris Interactive presents detailed polling data it has gathered on the subject.Kids 8-18 were given a list of communications technologies and asked which they use for various purposes. Take gossiping, for one. The cell phone and instant messaging were the methods most often cited for this purpose (each by 17 percent), followed by a landline phone (14 percent) and social-networking sites (11 percent). Few would use text messaging or e-mail for this (4 percent apiece). Then again, 34 percent would use "none of these" for gossip. When they want to "talk to a friend about something serious or important," they're most likely to use a cell phone (34 percent), least likely to use text messaging (2 percent). For more utilitarian kinds of communication, the phone's dominance is less consistent. If they want to arrange to meet a friend, more than half are likeliest to use a cell phone (36 percent) or landline (21 percent). When they need to "leave a short message for a friend," though, they're most likely to do so via social-networking sites (23 percent), with text messaging and e-mail close behind (19 percent apiece). Fifteen percent said they would use a cell phone for this, and 8 percent a landline. One odd tidbit: Instant messaging is twice as popular for arguing with a friend (18 percent use it for this purpose) as it is for apologizing to a friend (8 percent). Another part of the poll used fill-in-the-blank questions. One of these stated, "If I didn't have ____, I would miss out on activities with my friends." The cell phone got 29 percent of the vote, followed by instant messaging (20 percent), social-networking sites (17 percent) and text messaging (14 percent). Another query said, "I am more outgoing when I use ____ than I am in person." Instant messaging got the most votes (29 percent), trailed by social-networking sites (15 percent) and the cell phone and text messaging (10 percent each).Whatever their reasons for employing these technologies, kids seldom go long without using them. E-mail is the one they're most apt to use "every couple of days or more frequently" (82 percent). They're a bit more likely to use a cell phone than a landline this often (76 percent vs. 69 percent). A majority use instant messaging (61 percent) and social-networking sites (59 percent) at least every couple days, and nearly half use text messaging this often (46 percent).

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Mark Dolliver's Takes: The Kid Must Be Right

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Mark Dolliver